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Importance of skilled immigrants

Our current immigration laws, don't support a job creation goal, the author writes. |
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By BRAD SMITH | 7/26/11 5:26 AM EDT

Cities, states and nations now compete in a global talent pool — where high-skilled workers help create and attract employment opportunities. If the United States is going to create new jobs, and succeed competitively, we need to adapt to this rapidly changing global economy.

An important part of this effort is likely to turn on our ability to develop smart policies that ensure we nurture our own talent, and also attract the international, skilled workforce needed to ensure that the U.S. economy thrives.

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Yet today the United States faces a skills gap in our economy. Investments in education are critical to addressing this. But so, too, is thoughtful reform of U.S. immigration laws.

Enhancing our country’s workforce depends on targeted efforts to attract relatively small numbers of the most skilled people from around the globe to come here.

A strategic high-skilled immigration policy does not mean a zero-sum competition for jobs against U.S. citizens. To the contrary, high-skilled immigration can help create more jobs here for both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals alike.

Our current immigration laws, however, don’t support this job creation goal. We face shortages of skilled workers in key sectors of our economy.

For example, in May, Microsoft had 4,551 unfilled job openings in the U.S. — 2,629 in computer science and engineering. Filling these critical positions cannot be done — and certainly not in the near term — exclusively through educational improvements in the United States. Meanwhile, per-country caps on employment-based green cards threaten to make it more difficult to fill these jobs with talent from overseas.

In addition, restrictions in student visa programs push many of our universities’ brightest foreign graduates to go work in other nations. Sixty percent of computer science Ph.D. graduates from U.S. universities last year were foreign nationals, many of whom faced restrictions on their ability to work in this country.

Unemployment numbers are comprised of those that are in the job market for the past 30 days. It does not include those that have not been in the job market in the last 30 days: people who have given up looking; those that have gone off unemployment because it has run out. One solution to unemployment is "High Speed University" check it out

No one minds highly skilled immigrants coming into our country. But that's not what "immigration reform" is all about. We have a current immigration policy that will allow these people to come in. What we DON'T have, and what "immigration reform" wants to do is to open the borders up to anyone and everyone who wants to come in. We can't afford. The lack of enforcement is part of what has driven us into the recession we're in now.

Immigration reform is classic bait and switch program. Promise that if we reform immigration we will get all kinds of wonderfull skilled and talented foreign people becoming citizens and helping create jobs. Then what we actually get is more indigent people bankrupting our social net. We've been down this road before. We're not falling for it again.

This article is about highly skilled legal immigrant workers .... Who the devil is arguing about that? Golden straw man argument: when highly skilled, educated workers were coming here, there was little conflict or concern.

What we have is an uncontrolled, illegal invasion of people who immediately go on welfare, stress our public services, schools, jails, and ERs, drive labor prices to below poverty wages, take money in cash (therefore pay little taxes), and send that money back to Mexico.

The border criminals also traffic in drugs and children for the sex industry. See no evil, still?

While I am all for skilled and professional people immigrating to the United States, I don't see why we can't fill many of the positions from within. Let's not just push aside the "educational improvements" part of this equation. We have many capable and deserving citizens right here who would love the opportunity to go to school and fill those positions.

We have a program to admit skilled immigrants. The H1B visa program is specifically for the high-tech industry. They can import talent. And that is the ONLY kind of immigration we should have. Mass immigration should be ended. This is not an empty country anymore.

George Will commented on California budget mess: "California has exported talent, and imported Mexico's poverty"

Sign up with numbersusa.com, participate in their campaign to limit legal immigration to ONLY the H1B type people, to benefit our economy. We don't need any more illiterate criminals from latin America.

Cmon, again. We have never had anything against immigrations per se, we are all immigrants if you got back far enough. But how anyone could casually use the word "illegal" (or even think the word) when talking about immigrants is absolutely disgusting and stupid. Think the unemployed US citizens first for cryin out loud! And even if we are totally out of skills with US citizens we do not revert to the use of illegals. Look up the word in the dictionary for heavens sake!

Well now I have heard it all. First and foremost I think we should look back to the 50s, 60s and 70s. Who put man in space and on the moon? Anyone heard of Microsoft, Apple, Intel? Don't give me this psycho babble BS about america not having enough skilled workers. When, and only when, we have employment down to 5% then you can consider immigrants for jobs, at any level. If the large greedy corporations would stop shipping jobs overseas for slave labor and high profits, perhaps, just perhaps, America could get back on its feet. All states need to get an initiative on the November 2012 ballot about term limits. There are far too many career politicians making money off lobbyists. If a company ships jobs overseas it should be taxed on its revenue and goods generated there. Americans need to wake up and think about their country, their childrens' future and not themselves.

Well now I have heard it all. First and foremost I think we should look back to the 50s, 60s and 70s. Who put man in space and on the moon? Anyone heard of Microsoft, Apple, Intel? Don't give me this psycho babble BS about america not having enough skilled workers. When, and only when, we have employment down to 5% then you can consider immigrants for jobs, at any level. If the large greedy corporations would stop shipping jobs overseas for slave labor and high profits, perhaps, just perhaps, America could get back on its feet. All states need to get an initiative on the November 2012 ballot about term limits. There are far too many career politicians making money off lobbyists. If a company ships jobs overseas it should be taxed on its revenue and goods generated there. Americans need to wake up and think about their country, their childrens' future and not themselves.

As someone who does H-1B's for a living its good to hear all the love from my conservative brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, many on both sides argue against a mobile international workforce and the visa program is always under scrutiny and on the chopping block.

Ironically, it seems to be a free market that decides on the number of skilled workers in the US. In the late 90's and mid 2000's, congress capped the number of H-1B's issued. The cap was filled in a single day. But for the last few years, the cap was only reached after 10 or 11 months. There was no doubt that the program was abused by job shops but USCIS has done a lot to regulate against exploitation. That's also a major factor in the decline in applications.

I work at a research university and being able to recruit internationally is essential to the US staying leading the world in the science, technology, engineering and math. The best way to personalize it is by asking someone if the want the best American citizen bioengineer working on mom's artificial heart valve or the best bioengineer in the world? I think most people would choose the latter.

Still we need an immigration system that can adapt quickly to needs in the workforce.

We definitely need more educated immigrants in America. Most of the redneck teabaggers think that getting any kind of education (other than the homeschoolin' kind offered sister-mom or uncle-dad) is a "liberal conspiracy to turn their children into multi-cultural homosexuals who hate America." Somebody has to pick up the slack for those "red-blooded Americans" who would rather choose a career in the small-scale meth-production industry than go to college.

We won WW2 with half our current population and put a man on the moon with less than 2/3 of our current population. We need to get rid of the illegal invader parasites that soak up 133 BILLION in undeserved entitlements per year [or the equivalent of ten times the budget of our now defunct Space Administration]. all

As someone who does H-1B's for a living its good to hear all the love from my conservative brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, many on both sides argue against a mobile international workforce and the visa program is always under scrutiny and on the chopping block